New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Former Knicks Ward, Williams stand side by side
Charlie Ward and Monty Williams were picked two spots apart in the 1994 draft, both joining, at the time, the defending Eastern Conference champions.
Basketball brought them together in New York. Christian faith turned them into lifelong friends.
“Our faith together played a big part in how close we became. There were other guys that were drafted with us, but if you were drafted together and don’t have similar interests, most times you develop a basketball relationship and not a strong brotherly type of bond outside of basketball,” Charlie Ward told the New York Daily News. “And so we had those similar interests.”
Ward and Williams were the rare NBA roommates on the road. Their rookie wages were hardly poverty line — Ward, for instance, earned $575,000 as the 26th pick — but “we wanted to save money,” the former point guard said. They both endured grueling practice sessions under assistant Jeff Van Gundy, who oversaw rookie development and drilled them for 45 minutes before sending Ward and Williams to Pat Riley’s three-hour sessions. They both married their wives in the summer after their rookie seasons.
Then they stuck together as friends through the ups, the downs and a terrible tragedy.
“For me, I was just present,” Ward said about helping Williams after his wife, Ingrid, was killed in a 2016 car crash. “I think that was the biggest thing. He had a lot of other people doing a lot of other things for him. It wasn’t just one person or two people. It was a lot of people helping him through that process. And I was just there for him to be able to talk to if he needed something to help him through that time. But it was tough.”
On Tuesday, Williams,
49, will become the latest former Knick to participate in the NBA Finals, guiding the Phoenix Suns through a remarkable season few thought possible. He was barely edged out by Knicks skipper Tom Thibodeau for Coach of the Year, and the Suns’ playoff run through the Western Conference gauntlet — over the Lakers, Nuggets and Clippers — has only bolstered his growing reputation.
But Williams’ coaching career long ago exceeded his playing career, which was hampered by a heart condition.
Williams was told in
1990, while a freshman at Notre Dame, that his career was over after being diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the same defect that contributed to the deaths of Reggie Lewis and Hank Gathers. Williams’ heart, the doctor said, might quit under exertion. Williams skipped two college seasons but returned and was drafted 24th overall by Knicks GM Ernie Grunfeld, only to be shipped to the Spurs in a midseason 1996 trade.
Williams never averaged more than nine points in a season and retired at 31 years old.
Ward, 50, lasted much longer with the Knicks. He served as the starting point guard through the 1999 run to the NBA Finals, and remains, remarkably, the last Knicks draft pick to sign a second contract with the franchise.
“Those two had a great bond,” Van Gundy told the News. “Charlie didn’t get to play at all his rookie year. Monty played some but it gets hard. Those guys had a special personality that allowed them to come to a great team, not get a chance to play a lot, and not get so frustrated or overtly frustrated, that it didn’t impact their ability to improve. Those guys both were selfmade players.”
Williams transitioned quickly from playing to coaching, learning as a staff intern under Gregg Popovich in San Antonio. In 2010, he became the NBA’s youngest head coach at the time when he took over the Pelicans. Six years later, while he was an assistant with the Thunder, Williams’ wife was killed after her car collided head-on with another vehicle that crossed over the center divider. The tragedy shook the NBA because of its cruelty and impact on the Williams family, with five children suddenly mother-less. The driver of the other vehicle reportedly had meth in her system.
Williams, who has since re-married, thanked Ward and Ward’s wife, Tonja, for their spiritual support and the “confidence” to fully dive into faith.
“I wasn’t as outspoken as I wish that I was back then,” Williams said on the ‘Faith Driven Entrepreneur’ podcast. “Charlie was certainly somebody that gave me confidence to do it more. He had a ‘take it or leave it’ type attitude when it came to the gospel, you know, but he did it in a way that was attractive and loving. I was still caught in this trap of trying to fit in, but also wanting to represent Christ. And it was one of those moments for me or periods in life where I was just like, man, I’m not quite sure if I know how to … To be straight, I think I was more worried about my reputation and fitting in than Charlie. And that was why at the time, even though we were the same age, I looked up to Charlie a ton.”